Freestyle Academy proudly presents
This is a parody of the song “Into the Unknown” from Frozen 2, created using Adobe Audition and the Iso Booths at Freestyle. I initially made my parody using “Jamie’s Cryin’” by Van Halen instead, as I wanted to use a song that actually aligned with my music taste, but I realized far too late that this was severely limiting how well my song would actually land as a parody. The song was difficult to cover, and it just wasn’t funny, so I completely started over and chose a different song that I knew had more parodying potential. This ultimately had a very poor impact on my time management for this project and was one of the major reasons why I wasn’t able to submit it in a reasonable amount of time. However, I do not regret my decision to start from scratch, as I believe that this song is far more entertaining than my original choice and succeeds as a parody. My inspiration for this parody was a recent experience I had with my dad where we went to Costco together, and we exchanged jokes about being weirdly dedicated to Costco and it being kind of like wholesale Narnia. This made me want to explore the idea of someone who has this insane obsession and love for Costco, like a crazed stalker but instead of obsessing over a celebrity, they just really love Costco.
One of my biggest struggles was finishing my final recording after scrapping hours of work of my “Jamie’s Cryin’” parody. I spent all of my class time and several hours on the weekend recording for my new parody, but I really struggled to let go of problems with my singing and ended up doing what was likely over a hundred takes. I essentially kept re-recording until I ran out of every ounce of time I had left; I even re-recorded a small part of this at home on my portable recorder because I absolutely couldn’t stand how terrible one part of the song sounded and was willing to sacrifice the audio quality to make it slightly better. I am still very unsatisfied with the quality of my singing for this parody, but ultimately I understand that the only one who is actually bothered by this is me, and good singing wasn’t even the point of this project at all. If I could change anything about my parody, I would re-record both parts of the harmony until they actually create a pleasing harmony together, experiment more with the effects, and try to do a better job at singing the chorus.
During the project, I grew significantly in my knowledge of Adobe Audition and my ability to use its tools effectively. For example, I now am comfortable with the basic functions of Adobe Audition, including normalizing audio tracks, creating new tracks, using the effects rack, deleting empty tracks, and using the razor tool. In addition, I familiarized myself with the Mixer, panning audio from the left ear to the right ear, and using keyframes to automate volume changes on a track. I also learned a lot about the recording process and how to use recording tools in tandem with those of Adobe software, including setting the correct input source and enabling a track for recording. I began this assignment knowing absolutely nothing about how to use the program, and I am now comfortable using it for any time I may need to mix audio in the future. Finally, I learned that I really need to keep tabs on my obsession with perfection and take to heart that I simply have to lower my expectations of myself for certain things.
By far, I am most proud of my lyrics for this project. I genuinely find them really funny, even though the humor might not come through as well when I’m singing it. I’m very proud of my ability to come up with lyrics that fit the syllables of the original song while still rhyming and communicating a story/theme. I will definitely use my new knowledge of Adobe Audition in all future projects involving audio mixing and music production, and will learn from this experience to hopefully lighten up on the perfectionism going forward. This project gave me a major appreciation for musical artists and singers, as it really showed me how incredibly difficult and time-consuming it is to create music.